


cheer at the gallows

by kaiyen



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Codependency, Frottage, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, One Shot, Post-S11, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 19:55:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6920815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiyen/pseuds/kaiyen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mac's fucked up when he gets back from the cruise. Of course, he was before, but now it's different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cheer at the gallows

**Author's Note:**

> hey I wrote this at two in the morning after three double gin and tonics so I'm sorry if it's poorly written. if you see any mistakes or whatever tell me please?? also i've only started watching iasip recently so if I've got anything wrong in terms of canon i'm sorry. also i'm british so if I've slipped in any weird language stuff i apologise. i had to change trousers to pants so I clearly made an effort
> 
> i also think i've written mac a bit more sympathetically than i am for him but whatever. i also wrote this listening to tallahassee so you might be able to see some similarities if you listen to a few of those songs. but yeah i hope you like this?? idk
> 
> also content warning for suicide and also maybe for domestic violence?

There had been a few blissful moments then, when Mac had been fully accepting and willing to die with the gang. Dennis’ hand in his, a security in his lack of faith and a homosexual identity he didn’t feel guilt over all in all made for an oddly calming outlook to the prospect of their imminent deaths. Then the light had flood in, shimmering and dazzling through the water, and everyone’s hands had fell apart, no longer the apparently fond group they had been for a few fleeting seconds but back to the self-centered, self-professed assholes they all knew themselves to be as they fought to reach the illuminated doorway.

Mac had broken through the surface last, something he would lie to the gang about, presenting it as a selfless act when in fact the foot to the face he had received from Dennis on the way up was the real reason. He didn’t really remember much after that – there was a life boat, Charlie was sick and Dennis and Dee were having an argument that had blurred into background noise and then they were at the hospital. The doctors told him that it was the shock, but Mac knew otherwise. It was his own self-absorbed guilt.

Guilt over losing his faith, over his sexuality, over letting himself be lead so far from the path. While he immediately switched back to his front of denial in his statement and for the gang, he couldn’t pretend anymore. It had been so clear once he said it, lived it for the hours in the brig. God was real and he was gay. The jolt in his heart when Dennis had reached for him when the ship was first shaken and the excitement when his best friend gripped his hand like an anchor to reality hadn’t gone unnoticed to him either. He was a homosexual, a sinner, a sodomite, and completely and selfishly in love with Dennis Reynolds.

So maybe that was why he hadn’t slept in three days. Why he hadn’t eaten since the ship. And maybe that was why he was sitting on the side of the Ben Franklin Bridge at three AM, feeling the hum of the alcohol in his veins and his legs hanging freely over the edge.

He’d had a hell of a night. He had left the apartment in the early evening after telling Dennis that he was in love with him before doing what he would admit was running away and fleeing with no idea of where he was going (Mac knew Dennis would hate his cowardice, but he was past caring). Then, inevitably, he’d ended up in The Rainbow. He let a lean, blonde-haired dude with a shoddy haircut and an inordinate amount of piercings who was probably ten years younger than him blow him in the grimy toilets and spent the rest of the night getting shit-faced before they eventually turned him away and he left in a brief burst of anger and proceeded to wander aimlessly through the streets with an empty feeling in his heart.

He didn’t know what was keeping him as he felt the pull of gravity on his legs and the harsh concrete beneath his hands. All it’d take was one push, just a slight shuffle forward…

“What the hell are you doing?”

Mac’s eyes shot round to see Dennis standing several feet away, incredulous look on his face and hands held out. He wore a light pink shirt that was slightly too big for him, black jeans that were slightly too small. The orange of the streetlights and passing cars illuminated him softly, accentuating the angles of his face and making him seem out of place, like some grand Renaissance painting in a crack house.

“How did you find me?” he asked, surprisingly coherently.

“Tracked your phone,” Dennis told him, cutting in again before Mac could ask. “Answer my question.”

Mac shrugged. “Don’t know yet,” he looked down again.

“Woah, woah, woah,” he replied, coming closer. “You’re not actually thinking about jumping, are you?”

Mac stayed silent.

“You can’t do that, Mac,” Dennis insisted.

“Why not, Dennis?” he snapped, turning red-rimmed eyes towards him again. “I’m going to hell anyway.”

He watched the anger flicker over Dennis’ face as he clenched his jaw and balled his fists. “I thought you said you didn’t believe in God anymore,” he said, low and dangerous.

“I lost my way!” Mac exclaimed. The prospect of jumping seemed increasingly appealing.

“So what, you’re straight again?” Dennis asked heatedly. “Newsflash, Mac, when you tell your male best friend you’re in love with him and then go to a gay bar, you’re probably not-”

“I know,” Mac interrupted. “I’m gay.”

Dennis was quiet for a few moments. “Why are you here then?” he asked, anger losing its steam.

“I don’t want to be gay, Den,” Mac replied, eyes meeting Dennis’, who was now standing right next to him.

“You’re not going to jump,” Dennis said firmly. “You can’t just do that after telling me you love me,” he paused. “Suicide’s a sin, Mac.”

Mac nodded. “Yes.”

“So you can’t-”

“Watch me,” Mac said decisively and pushed off with his hands.

He didn’t fall forward. Quite the opposite, in fact. Mac fell backwards as arms tightly grabbed him and pulled him to the floor. Dennis let out a winded breath when Mac fell on top of him and he was too stunned to do anything when Dennis shoved him off him.  “What the hell, Mac?”

Dennis grabbed him and pulled him up before leading him off the bridge, hand gripped tightly round his wrist before shoving him in the passenger seat of his car. Mac spent most of the journey in silence, listening to the whine of the engine and Dennis’ muttered expletives and curses the whole way back to the apartment. Once they reached it, Dennis got out the car and returned his bruising clasp to Mac’s wrist as he pulled him into Dee’s apartment. Mac knew as soon as he entered that Dee wasn’t there. Dennis sat him onto the couch and put his hands on his hips.

“How could you do that?” Dennis sounded angry, about ready to lunge at him. Anger was about the only emotion Mac could remember Dennis displaying in many years. “How could you leave me after what you said?”

Mac felt his own jaw clench, rage offering a new clarity through the haze of alcohol. “How could _I_ leave _you_? I don’t know if you realise this, Dennis, but this isn’t about you,” he said, although it was, in part, a lie. Dennis was a contributing factor.

“Not about me?” Dennis asked loudly, a disbelieving expression on his face. “You tell me you love me- no, not just love me, that you are _in_ love with me, and then you storm off and go to a fucking gay bar before trying to throw yourself off a bridge.”

It suddenly came to Mac’s attention that there was no reason for Dennis to know that he went to the gay bar. “How did you know I was in The Rainbow?”

“I told you dude, I tracked your phone,” Dennis said. At Mac’s frown, he added, “You check in on me, I check in on you!”

“With words, Dennis! I don’t stalk you,” Mac replied, standing up, face to face with the other man.

Dennis’ brows knit together in confusion. “How else am I supposed to know where you are?” they stared at each other for a moment. “Never mind. You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me, Mac.”

“Maybe that was what I wanted, Den!” Mac cried out. “I’ve failed God, I’m a sinner, I’m going to hell and I’m in love with my _straight_ best friend-”

Dennis slapped him, open palm stinging against his cheek and knocking him to the side. Mac’s hand touched the side of his face and he threw a shaky punch with his left hand that missed its mark and collided with Dennis’ chest.

Dennis coughed and glowered, barreling into him and tackling him straight into the wall, smashing a photo frame.

Mac’s forming ideas of what he was going to do next were cut off by Dennis’ lips colliding with his, their teeth clashing in the way good kisses shouldn’t. It was more of an unrelenting impact than a kiss and Mac would have stumbled back a step if he wasn’t already against the wall. Dennis pulled away, hand gripping the back of Mac’s neck tightly and eyes flickering over his face trying to gauge a reaction. Mac was well aware that his mouth was hanging open and he looked particularly dazed, so he snapped his mouth shut and allowed the anger to take hold again. He thought he should push Dennis back, hit him in the face for trying to manipulate him again. He didn’t.

Mac clashed his own mouth with Dennis’, pushing him backwards and slamming him into the back of the couch. Dennis’ lips tasted like sweet strawberry gloss and his mouth tasted like scotch, bitter and clean, a crude juxtaposition of flavours on Mac’s tongue. Dennis’ hands were fisted in his hair and Mac’s were wrapped around Dennis’ body as Dennis pushed them both over onto the sofa, hitting it with a shock that made Mac unintentionally bite Dennis’ lower lip harder than he had meant to, drawing blood. The metallic taste mingled with the previous sweetness and bitterness and Mac felt Dennis push their hips into each other, both of their erections jutting against each other.

Dennis pushed his forehead against Mac’s, pupils blown wide, and Mac held onto Dennis with a desperate strength, like the man on top of him could disappear at any moment. The anger between them had since passed, replaced by necessity and dependency, both of them entwined like interlacing tendrils of vines, suffocating and parasitic.

Mac clumsily undid Dennis’ belt and the front of his jeans, shoving his hand down the front and working his cock at the hastened rhythm Dennis had set out moments before. The fists in his hair clenched harder with each passing moment, their lips meeting in short and yearning bursts and for Mac this felt like this was _it_ , with Dennis’ cock in his hand and his breath in his lungs. Mac knew he was close, and when Dennis pulled his face up from where he was looking down and forcing him to look into the deep blue of his eyes and taking him right back to the stormy ocean on the way back to shore as he came with a breathy cry of his name, he was gone and came himself in his pants like a teenager.

Dennis collapsed on top of him, head on his chest and body slipping down into the crevice of the sofa, hand still holding the back of his head, although more tenderly, which was not a word he would typically associate with Dennis in any context. Mac’s heart was pounding in his chest and he was sure Dennis was keeping his head on his chest to hear it.

“You’re not going to leave me,” Dennis murmured, not looking up. If Dennis was anyone else, Mac would have taken that as a plea, a profession of love, but he knew what it was. It was a command, an order that Mac was incapable of disobeying.

“No,” he confirmed.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a struggling student - buy me a [ko-fi](http://ko-fi.com/kaiyen)?


End file.
